Anthropomorphist
I'm a 3rd generation witness and I'm not from the USA. I'm technically still a witness but I count as inactive. I'm not really faded because I live with my parents and occasionally socialize with other witnesses. My dad is a liberal and everyone loves him because he's very hands off and understanding when it comes to judicial matters, he's not out to disfellowship people and he's not dogmatic. He is a proper elder though. He's also probably the only watchtower conductor to regularly finish the material with 5 minutes to spare! I want to avoid getting DA/DF out of a charitable feeling, so that the congregation doesn't get stuck with one of the dreary conductors. He was once deleted (such an awful word) for the crime of attending his disfellowshipped niece's wedding so if anything else happens, he's definitely out again. Not that he would mind much. My mom was the stern one, me and my dad called her the Mosaic Law when I was a kid, she's a convert. As a kid I was fully zealous and loved meetings and ministry and all of that. I got baptized at 12. My dad was against it but it wasn't proper for him to stop me really, I wish he had. After I got baptized, puberty hit and I mutated into a silent grumpy teenager. I stopped praying a while after that because I thought: who am I even praying to? For so many years I vacillated between believing it was the truth and realizing it's just a bunch of american old men who are full of shit. I knew it was the truth because there was nothing else that could be true, that's what took me so long to break free. I also went on some apostate websites but they were so full of bile or so full of senseless drivel that I knew it was like the watchtower said. What made me fully convinced that jws are wrong was evolution and the basic teachings. I would discuss with a non jw friend and I would give him the usual creationist argument and his general responses meant that I had gotten the whole thing wrong. He also made me realize that believing in the resurrection is equivalent to believing in life after death (big duh moment!) and that it makes absolutely no sense. The Bible's chronology doesn't fit with logic either: people are supposed to have scattered from the Middle East 4000 years ago and managed to reach South America and had the time to develop major civilizations, have them collapse, develop others, in just that much time? It's not possible. In the final weeks before I decide to quit, I would get nauseous when in meetings or just thinking about them. I physically couldn't stomach another meeting or another stupid adulating talk about the wonderful kindness of Jehovah. Later I found about exjw and reluctantly became a regular lurker, then a more or less regular commenter as I realized that those were normal people just like me who had gone through much much worse experiences. I heard about the UN relationship and was shocked at learning about the misquotes. I researched them myself and they checked out. All through the years I had resented the authoritarianism, obvious illogic, disregard of women, condescension towards people of the "world" and permissiveness towards their own but I never questioned the truth of it because nothing else could be true so this one was bound to be right. But now, it was impossible that the jw teachings could be right and finally I am mentally free. Also, all my cousins from my dad's side, literally all 7 of them, have left so it wouldn't be right if I stayed in :) I'm only now realizing the social damage it has done to me. Growing up, it hurt so much to be excluded from everything, like I was unwanted and inferior. I was never socially outgoing and not doing birthdays/xmas/ easter/etc... isolated me even more. In my congregation there was literally not a single person close to my age and I couldn't really connect with anyone, I was alone. Nobody really thought to check with me or took a personal interest in me, probably because my dad was an elder and my mom a pioneer. So I felt unwanted and an outsider in the jw world as well. I think most of this will remain with me because I'm already 30 so it's all ingrained in my personality but hopefully I will be able to improve some aspects.